Diary of a Homemaker: Sprung

 

Saturday:  John and I always plan some time away from home on Saturday.  It is, as he says, our day off and we know that if we stay home, we are going to inadvertently end up doing some level of childcare.  Not that Mama isn't trying to avoid having us do it.  No, it's trying to explain to a 3-year-old child that Gramma and Grandpa are off duty when he sees us right in front of his eyes same as Monday-Friday.

That said, we generally aren't gone all day on a weekend, though I'm personally looking into the possibility of a weekend away simply because we NEED the time fully away from things to really rest and relax.  However, we aren't there yet.  We are still here.

Today we slept until nearly 9am which was pure luxury for all of us.  And then John and I went to get haircuts.  I've had a pixie cut for quite a few years now, but I wanted a change.  I decided to go a bit shorter on the sides and back and yes, it is quite short now. 

 I have quite a few stubborn cowlicks and one in particular on the back of my head is especially prone to sticking straight out.  Every time I looked in the mirror there was that hank of hair standing out from the rest of my head.  I tried using products to hold it down, leaving it a bit longer (which just looked worse), slicking it down repeatedly in an attempt to train it to lie down, etc.  What I really want to do was take the scissors to it myself.  Not a good idea!  I've cut other people's hair and done a good job on it but never have I been able to trim my own with good results.  So, I asked the stylist to cut it off.  We discussed options and I showed her some photos of what I was thinking.  And now it's done.

I always find the balance for me, with a really short haircut is to try to look as feminine as possible.  I'm more prone to wear earrings and a touch of makeup daily even around the house, to take a little further care with how I look and most especially here at home.  

We walked down the shopping center to a burger place.  Not a great place nor a bad one.  It's okay.  It was a convenient spot to eat lunch and that's what we were really there for.   Then we headed to Target but didn't make it.  We stopped at another store, At Home, where I looked over their bed pillow selection.  I wasn't highly impressed and would have preferred Target, but I did choose two pillows to replace the two oldest pillows we're using on our bed.  

Then we headed home.  

Tonight, we had offered to do additional childcare and allow Mama an evening out with a friend of hers.  I'm afraid that overall, we had as difficult an evening as we had on Thursday, but two hours is a lot easier than 11 hours of it.    He went right to sleep once in bed this evening and admittedly we were more than grateful for that fact.

Sunday:  Church this morning and then home.  I tried to get a couple of hours housework done so that I wouldn't feel overwhelmed on Monday.  I brought out meats to thaw for the week ahead, just to give myself added preparation time for the week ahead.  I wiped off the fronts of one row of cabinets.  I planted the Stargazer bulbs...I feel I have accomplished something today.

I'm going to take the rest of the day fairly easy.  This too is a 'day off'.  There's a whole week to do work in ahead of me.

Monday:  I slept fairly well last night and I'm grateful for this.  I managed to get the bed made before I existed our room this morning.  That meant that the bedroom was essentially ready for the day/week when I walked out since I'd put clothing away last night.  

I straightened up the master bath and then sorted out my desk and totted up the check register.  I started a sheet for March, so that it's ready to go here in just two days (!).

In the kitchen this morning, I moved some things off the counter where the microwave and toaster oven are located.  I am happier now with the arrangement of things in the kitchen.  It looks less cluttered.  It also allots me a larger counter as workspace.  I find too often I'm trying hard to work on that small section of counter between the stove and sink.

After breakfast this morning, I got the kitchen cleaned up a bit more and then started prepping food for the week ahead. This is always such a help when I take the time to do it.

It's rainy and dreary outdoors.  I am going to take it the rest of the afternoon easy after I do one more task.   I've a book to read and a post I'd like to work on writing.

This afternoon we were puzzled by non-working outlets.  LO pointed out to Grampa that his multi-plug/surge protector wasn't working.  We thought the thing was just worn out and replaced it with another one.  Nope.  The plug on the shared wall in the kitchen also didn't work.  LO had unlatched the door that covers the electric panel this morning.  Sure enough, looking in we found he'd switched off a circuit breaker.  Sigh.  We put a hook and eye on this cabinet door, but he can easily reach it now due to the location of the cabinet on the wall.  I've been wracking my brain to figure out how we might latch this in such a way that we can easily get into it.  I don't think a normal child proof cabinet door lock will work since there is not depth behind this door.

Tuesday:  Everyone woke in a fairly good mood this morning, but the day disintegrated and I've no idea why.   Adults were to blame, without a doubt.  Neither of us is feeling 100%.   I don't feel well; something feels physically off.  Like my body might be fighting off a virus.   John has been struggling for a few weeks now.  He is having a bad flare with Hashimoto's Disease.  He feels unwell enough to call the doctor and make an appointment without my urging.  I think that has added to my worrying over him.  

Little One is full of his usual monkey antics and No's but it's not gone over well today.  So, stubbornness increases as do tempers.  Sigh.  Some days are just difficult without any real rhyme or reason.

I slipped outdoors during a period when LO was occupied to get the compost cans which I'd washed and set out to dry last night.  I was taken aback by the soft warm air, not humid at all with just a lovely gentle breeze blowing.  The quietness, too, befuddled me when indoors was so noisy.  I sank into the seat of the rocker and just sat there rocking gently and enjoying the sound of the birds...and the yowl of a teed off Misu who hasn't gotten louder and fussier with old age.  She wandered back around to the front porch to yowl at the front door when I didn't move.  Rufus felt duty bound to go sit with her.

Bean came along to remind me that he too was missing his morning meal.  LO came running across the floor and I knew that short interlude was over, but it surely was lovely and peaceful out there.  Itchy eyes reminded me that pretty as it might be we are deep into pollen season.

I am having an ongoing issue with the need to store many things in limited spaces.  LO decided that today was the day to begin explorations under the guest bath sink.  There's only one cleaning item under there but there were some hair products of his mom's and a guest basket (extra new toothbrushes, trial sized toothpastes, etc.) I'd been keeping under there.  Those will all have to find a new home.   

It's not like so much stuff moved in with the family when they came.  Clothes mainly and favorite blankets but no furniture, no stuff.  However, in shifting things to insure they have enough room the whole house is getting that overflow look and feeling.  It is not helped by the fact that some areas already were like overflow areas.  We've things shoved under beds, into corners, filled closets to capacity and then some.  Some of it is more a sense of being tightly packed and too full rather than factual but there is enough extra that we are truly getting to be at a loss as to where to put it all.

I realized today there's no hope for it.  I must declutter deeply, move some things out to the shed and repurpose whatever I might as storage space in cabinets that can be kept locked against a curious little boy.   The trouble is...I just don't feel like it!

Wednesday:  My attitude really sucked this morning.  Blame it on lying in bed reading too late last night, dissatisfaction with the way the book ended, the gray morning or just an overall unwillingness to greet the day with grace.  I needed an adjustment and had to take myself off alone for a few minutes after breakfast and work on it hard.  Ugh.

I'd decided, in facing all the outages at breakfast time, that today must be the day to go to the grocery.  Then I flung a minor fit and said I wouldn't go and John went off, got dressed, came back and told me to get ready.  He offered to go this evening, a fact that I resented.  Number 1, I hate to shop in the evening for groceries.  Number 2, I felt like I was being asked to give up time I regard as MINE, which I resented and said so.  He rightly told me to just make up my mind and to get my attitude together and I agreed I needed to do just that.

Maybe I just needed to get out of the house, period.  The shopping went very well today.  All I needed, and all I had on my list was in stock today.   Little One rode in a separate cart pushed by Grampa and I had my own cart.  I don't mind saying this is the way to shop as far as I'm concerned.  I feel like I'm better able to focus on the shopping.  

We stopped for fast food lunch which was eaten on the way home.  All of us finished our meals.  Little One even asked for a portion of my meal and ate a bit more.

As we topped the hill coming into town the distant views were decidedly heavy with pollen in the air.  It really is astonishing to see how much pollen there is out there.  I noted redbud, pines, bradford pear, peaches and more blooming and tiny green leaves have appeared on most all of the trees!  There may be 20 more days of winter but the world says SPRING IS HERE and no pretense about it.  I always get nervous when we have this much in bloom in late winter.  In the past several years we've had frosts well past the April 15 date that the almanac says is our last front date.  

And if there is no frost, does it bode for a hot spring and hotter summer?  There's always that possibility as well.  At this point, I remind myself, I'm not in charge of weather and not a thing I do will change it so I might as well stop worrying and relax on this score at the least.

Thursday:  John had a chiro appointment this morning.  I'd planned to go along and take Little One over to the fast-food place playground.  I didn't tell him my plans because rain was threatening.  I will say that based on the number of loud NOs I was hearing this morning, I had two choices.  Take him on in hopes he could run off energy or stay home and spend the morning battling.  I decided to see what my odds were for avoiding rain.

I should have worried more about pollen.  Honestly the air was hazy yellow, and it was like looking at a yellow fog as we'd look down the roadways and even the streets in town.  Fortunately, I'd made sure we all took a dose of allergy medicine before we left home.

Dropped John off and then we turned the corner and went to Burger King.  I bought him a juice, and we headed outdoors to the playground.  This is a particularly clean and nice place, but it does sit next to a busy five-point intersection of highway, so the traffic noise was high.  However, the playground here was super nice and neat and had loads of benches, tables, umbrellas over those tables not sitting under the eaves of the building and a vast gym of slides and stairs.

We'd been there perhaps five minutes when a young man came up with two kids.  One was a wee bit older than LO and the other a wee bit younger.  The three boys enjoyed themselves tremendously for a good hour until it began to sprinkle rain on us.   I'm happy that this was all the incentive needed to get LO to leave.  He doesn't like getting wet in the rain at all.

We arrived back at the chiro's office at the exact moment John was done.  Good timing!  I drove to the discount grocery from the Chiropractor's office.  I wanted to take advantage of a couple of sales there.  The meat supply is back up to a good level now.  I suspect I can manage a month to six weeks on what we have now which makes me feel good.

I still have grocery funds left for the month, but I'll go a good bit more cautiously from here on.  

Friday:  I'm taking a break from my morning's work.  So far, I've cleaned and cleared the kitchen, tidied bath and bedroom, remade our bed with fresh linens, picked up living room and cleaned the inside of the fridge.  Just noticed a leaking inside which makes me think perhaps the compressor is freezing and thawing in the freezer.  I'll have to see if we need to get the repair man out once more, sigh.  I really do not want to replace the fridge at this point in time for all my pretending I wanted one as large as the new freezer.

I've just shoved a load of food into my freezer, all leftovers from this week, simply because I could NOT think what we might do with them.  All are perfectly good foodstuffs but at present I've a glut of things in the fridge and I know that even if we make three meals a day from them for the next five days, we'll only end up with something spoiling.  So, I popped those things into the fridge with an eye towards a future use of them.

Now I must determine what our weekend menu is going to look like, and by weekend, I also mean this evening's meal which I include on my weekend menu plan.  I try to have something that is easy and no fuss about clean-up on Friday evenings.   It's a signal to ME that the weekend is ahead, and I am more or less off duty for a little while at least.

Big Sister is coming this weekend.  Their Mama treats them to a fast-food lunch and some time at a playground or park if the weather allows.  It breaks up the journey for all of them.  Big Sister spends an average of 3 hours in the car on Saturday and Sunday when she visits and returns to her Dad.  That's a lot of time for any child.  Little One ends up spending about the same amount of time in the car between the trip up and back again, so the stop for lunch is a nice break for them all.  

Menus...I have no idea what I'd like to make this weekend at all, and hence I am only stalling.  I think I'll send this post on out, wish you all a pleasant weekend ahead and for those of you like myself who are feeling a bit worn down, plenty of rest for to face the week ahead.